Family & farm ground
Building on inherited or farm ground around St. Anthony
Published · every figure below was checked against its primary source on the date shown.
The building is the easy part
There is a particular project that comes up constantly around St. Anthony: somebody wants to build a house on ground the family already owns. A corner of a field. The old home place. Forty acres that came through an estate.
It sounds simpler than buying a lot, and in one sense it is — the land is already yours, or nearly. In practice it is usually slower, because a building permit application needs several things that a farmed block has never needed and therefore may not have.
Four things that may not exist yet
| What the county needs | Why farm ground often lacks it |
|---|---|
| A legal description — parcel, section, township, range; and lot and block if platted | An unplatted block has a description, but people rarely have it to hand and it is not the mailing address |
| The land owner's signature, or a signed permission letter from them | The owner is frequently an estate, a trust, or several siblings — not the person doing the building |
| Recorded access, and a driveway permit for new access to a county road or highway | A field entrance used for decades is not automatically legal recorded access |
| A septic permit, required at submittal, from Eastern Idaho Public Health | Nobody has ever needed one on ground that grew potatoes |
The signature line is the one that stops people
Of those four, the ownership question causes the most delay, because it is the one that cannot be solved by paying a fee or filling in a form. The county states what it needs directly:
“The permits are valid for TWO years, and the permit application must be signed by the land owner. If the land owner has not signed the permit we must have a signed permission letter (our office can provide you with this) signed from the land owner allowing you to pull the permit for them.”
— Fremont County, Pre-Construction Check List for Building Permits, rev. 17 April 2026. Retrieved 14 August 2026
Two useful facts in one paragraph: the permit is good for two years, and the county itself supplies the permission letter if the person applying is not the owner on title.
On inherited ground, “the land owner” can be surprisingly hard to name. If title still sits with a parent who has died, the person who can sign is whoever the estate's personal representative is. If it sits in a trust, it is the trustee. If four siblings inherited jointly, it may be all four. None of that is unusual and none of it is a disaster — but it is a legal question, and it is far cheaper to answer it in a lawyer's office in March than at a permit counter in June.
This site is not giving you legal advice and cannot. What it can tell you is that this is the item to put first on the list, because everything else waits behind it.
The order to work through
- Establish who legally owns the ground, in the form the county will accept a signature from. Get the answer from a title company or an attorney, not from family memory.
- Get the legal description — parcel number, section, township, range. The county will not process an application without it.
- Decide whether you are dividing the parcel. If yes, that is a separate planning process with its own timeline and it goes first. If no, say so and move on.
- Settle access. Is there recorded legal access to the house site? If you are creating new access to a county road or highway, the driveway permit goes through Public Works or ITD.
- Start the septic file. The permit is required when you submit the building permit application, so the site evaluation has to happen before that, not after. Eastern Idaho Public Health, Fremont County office, 45 South 2nd West, St. Anthony — (208) 522-8065.
- Then talk to builders, with a parcel that can actually be permitted.
Why this order saves money
Every step above is upstream of the building. Reversed — builder first, paperwork later — you end up holding a signed contract and a schedule against ground that cannot yet carry a permit, and the cost of that is measured in months.
There is a second reason. A septic site evaluation is the one step in this list capable of returning an answer you do not want. Doing it early, before anyone has been paid to draw anything, means a bad result costs you a fee instead of a design.
If you are somewhere in this and unsure which step you are actually on, describe it on (208) 656-1745. You will get the order that fits your situation, at no cost, from someone who is not trying to sell you a house.
Related reading on this site
- St. Anthony issues its own building permits — farm ground is almost always the county path — here is what that means
- What it costs to build a custom home in St. Anthony — where the public fees sit in a build on your own ground
- Shop house or barndominium? The county cares about height — the classification question that often comes first on farm ground
Common questions
Can I build a house on family farm ground near St. Anthony?
Often yes, but rarely as quickly as people expect. Ground that has been farmed in one block for decades frequently has no separate legal parcel for the house site, no recorded access to it, and no assigned address — and each of those has to exist before a permit file can be complete.
What does the county need that catches people out?
The signature. Fremont County's checklist says the permit application must be signed by the land owner, and that if the land owner has not signed, the county must have a signed permission letter from the land owner allowing you to pull the permit for them. On inherited ground the owner is often an estate, a trust, or several siblings.
What if the property is still in a parent's name or in an estate?
Then the person who can sign is whoever the legal owner is, which may be a personal representative or a trustee rather than a family member who assumes they can sign. Sort this out before you apply, not at the counter. It is a legal question and worth an hour of an attorney's time.
Do I need to split the parcel first?
If you are creating a new separate lot, that is a land-division question for the planning office rather than the building department, and it has its own process and timeline. If you are building on the existing parcel without dividing it, you may not need to. Establish which situation you are in early — it is the single biggest driver of how long this takes.
What does the county need on the application itself?
The checklist is explicit that an incomplete application will not be accepted or processed, and that you must include the parcel, section, township and range, plus the subdivision with lot and block if you are in one. On unplatted farm ground that legal description is the first thing to track down.
What about water and sewage?
Outside the city you are on a well and a septic system, and the septic permit is required at the moment you submit the building permit application — not afterwards. It comes from Eastern Idaho Public Health, on a separate file.
Is there an access problem I should expect?
Sometimes. A field entrance that a family has used for forty years is not necessarily recorded access, and if you are creating new access onto a county road or highway the county requires a driveway permit through Public Works or the Idaho Transportation Department. Ask before you assume the track you grew up driving is a legal approach.
How early should I start?
Earlier than feels necessary. The construction is the predictable part. Ownership, parcel status, access and the legal description are the parts with no fixed timeline, and they are all upstream of a permit application the county will not accept if it is incomplete.
Ask about a build in St. Anthony
Describe the parcel and roughly what you have in mind. What comes back is an honest read on which firms here take that kind of work, plus the one thing most people have not established yet: whether the city or the county will be reviewing your plans. Free, and nothing automated ever follows.
- Say where the ground is and what you intend to put on it.
- You are pointed toward the firms in this town with that work behind them.
- From there it is between you and them. No commission, no introduction fee, and nobody standing between you and your own contract.
One contact method is plenty — whichever you prefer. A human being writes back.